Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Building Supercomputers in Australia

Went along to part of the Australian Undergraduate Students' Computing Conference this week. That may sound deadly dull, academic and far removed from the real world, but it wasn't. One presentation was from a company which builds supercomputers in Canberra and another on how to secure e-commerce transactions.

Richard Alexander is an entertaining speaker. He is the CEO & Founder of Alexander Technology, a Canberra startup selling supercomputers. Richard got into this business by selling the ANU computer science department the components for their award winning "Bunyip" super computer.

Their strategy is initially to sell to researchers. Buying a supercomputer costing millions of dollars is a big decision for a researcher, but instead they can buy one from Alexander for a few hundred thousand. The business case is that such a computer can make a ten fold increase in research productivity, as measured by the number of research papers produced. More computer power means more numbers crunched and more results which can be written up.

Richard estimates the market for such computers in Australia as only being a few hundred. But the same computer architecture can be used for commercial applications requiring lots of processing, opening up a larger business and government market. Richard sees the hardware becoming a commodity and the money to be made from software and services.

I first heard of the Bunyip when sitting in the common room at ANU and overhearing two colleagues going through the specifications for building the system. When I heard they were building their own supercomputer I thought they were crazy. When I saw the completed unit, I still thought they were crazy. It looks like a whole lot of cheap PC boxes stacked on old library shelves. This is because it is a whole lot of cheap PC boxes stacked on old library shelves. But the clever part is in the way they are networked and programmed.

Alexander Technology are past the PC box stage and are now using rack mounted PC cards in more elegant looking cases. But the principle of using lots of low cost processors connected with the fastest affordable network remains.

I have suggested to the Chinese Government that they could fill warehouses with such supercomputers to run their country, the US government they could load them on a high speed ship for military operations. The Australian military could load one into their new Wedgetail mini-Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft to turn it into a airborne command post for relief operations.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Three pages the fundamental size for information?

Recently I read the O'Reilly Google Hacks book. It suggests a successful web site should have at least 100 content pages, with each page of 5 to 15kbytes, with a minimum of images. It occurred to me that such a web site is about the same size as the average book, divided up into three printed page sections. Perhaps this is not a coincidence and represents a useful unit of information for people to use.

If you have 100 web pages each of 10kbytes that is 1,000 kbytes. Assuming one quarter of the web page is formatting, that leaves 750 kbytes of text. I did a quick survey of a couple of books within reach and found they were about 300 pages long with about 2500 characters per page, or about 750 kbytes of text in total. That doesn't sound very scientific, so I did a search and found a report from University of California saying the average book has 300 pages and .75 Mbytes of plain text equivalent.

That the average book is the same as the minimum size for a web site should not be a surprise. Both books and web pages are designed to be read by people and so people set the limit on size (
just as the size of a business card is not set by printing technology but by the size of a human hand).

Previously I have done web based books with one web page per chapter. This was easy to maintain, but
a whole chapter on one web page seemed a bit long for the reader. I got some complaints from readers and more recently noticed Google AdWords had difficulty working out what these chapters were about so it could put relevant ads on them.

Following Google Hacks' advice, the amount of information in the average web site should be divided into 100 pieces, each
the equivalent of 3 printed pages. My quick survey found about ten chapters in the average book, so each chapter would be made up of ten sections, for a total of 30 pages per chapter.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Computers for Trains


Thursday I went along to the exhibition for AusRail 2005, This is convention for the Australian rail industry. There were quite a few computer related exhibits, combining my hobby interest in trains with a professional interest in IT for large systems.

The photo shows me driving a locomotive simulator from Corys. This is used for training locomotive drivers, in much the same way aircraft simulators are used for pilots. There wasn't a full mockup of a locomotive cab, but even with a set of controls and a PC screen it was very realistic.

Ansaldo Signal had a live feed from the Train Control System they have installed in Perth. This used five LCD screen to show where each train was on the Perth network.

Motorola's demonstrated their Mobile Mesh Network Technology to transmit security video from a train. The idea with a mesh network is that any unit can be used to relay signals, removing the need for expensive base stations. The hardware used is much the same as for WiFi.

Lockheed Martin showed an Advanced Train Management System to be based on Telstra's CDMA network. This seemed odd as only a few days ago Telstra announced they were phasing out CDMA.

Last year I suggested to the NSW transport minister that some of these gadgets could be useful in accidents.

Running an organization online: The Australian Computer Society


Greetings from the national council of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The ACS holds two meetings a year of its peak body. Being a computer organization it is not surprising the ACS has worked to adapt computers for the meetings. Only standard hardware and software is used, but adapted for working in a live meeting.

As Director of Communications Technologies for the ACS I have a particular interest in the way it uses IT to make decisions and run the organization. There isn't much point in the organisation trying to sort out public policy on things like metropolitan boadband blackspots if it can't use the technology itself.

There are about 30 people in a meeting room in Sydney sitting around a U shaped table (see photo). At the open end of the U is a projection screen with the agenda on it.

Most people have a laptop computer in front of the them, linked by WiFi. The agenda and papers are provided electronically on a secure web site. The agenda is a HTML web page, with the agenda papers linked to this. The agenda papers are mostly word processing documents and presentations.

When someone wants to make a presentation they can stay where they sit and be passed a wireless microphone and a video cable for their laptop. Most times prepared presentations are given. Sometimes after discussion proposals are modified live on the screen using a word processor. This was everyone can follow the details of what changes are being made.

Much of the time the attendees are intent reading and typing at their laptops. This can be a bit disconcerting if you are giving a presentation and the audience doesn't appear to be paying attention. But often the audience is actively working on what you are talking about, reading ahead in the presentation, searching and preparing counter proposals.

On occasions we have tried things like compute mediated brainstorming systems, such as the Grouputer. But mostly it is just ordinary computer hardware and software used.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Making Standards Like Open Source

Friday morning I attended the Annual General Meeting of Standards Australia in Canberra. I represent Australian Computer Society on Standards Australia's Council. Open Source programmers think they invented the idea of people getting together to develop technology and then giving the results away. But standards makers have been doing it for a hundred years. Companies which fiercely compete in the market and countries at war still get their experts together and agree standards to help the world operate efficiently. Like Open Source they results of this work are made freely available.

For those who don't know, Standards Australia is a non profit non-government organization with volunteer members. The standards developed have no legal force, but are often adopted by governments. Even standards not backed by law have a lot of moral force. SA works with other national and international standards bodies. The Australian Computer Society is one of the members of Standards Australia, along with engineers architects and other professional bodies.

Standards Australia and its sister organizations around the world just look after the administrative side of standards development. The actual work of drafting standards is done by expert volunteers sent by their companies, government agencies and universities. The experts are supposed to leave their organization affiliations at the door, to do a standard for the common good and mostly this happens.

Standards development is at an interesting transition time. Global standards are much in vogue to foster international trade. The Internet is forcing changes in the ways standards are created and distributed.

Standards Australia floated its commercial publications operation on the Australian stock market as SAI Global Limited. Stanndards Australia still makes the standards but SA Global sells them.

Standards Australia have sponsored a history "Engine of Change: Standards Australia since 1922: by Winton Higgins. SA are giving away the book and if you ask Ariella Mitchell she might give you a copy. Like the history ACS published some time ago it is not exactly a riveting read, but a useful scholarly work. Higgins is a Research Fellow at UTS and there is a paper from him on the same topic. But his research is flawed in one part of the book claiming OSI communications standards somehow fostered the Internet. In fact OSI and the Internet were bitter rivals. Internet standards were, and still are, made outside the international standards process which Standards Australia is a part of.

IT people are used to making standards online and standards bodies are having to come to grips with providing tools for doing this. Standards Australia has
Consensus Builder as an online web based tool for helping committees to do their work. But most committees still involve face to face meetings and mountains of paperwork.

Standards NZ were at the SA meeting in Canberra. SANZ is a government body, but works much the same as Standards Australia and works on jopint AU/NZ standrads. Standards NZ have brought in a system for selling standards online, mostly by subscription. Perhaps it would be cheaper to get Australian standards via SA NZ? ;-)

Some changes were made to SA's structure at the meeting to streamline the processes. These came from a report from consultants Cameron Ralph. There was much humor over this as the report is still marked "confidential", despite being on the web.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Is the $100 Laptop a Windup?


A $100 laptop computer designed for education in the developing world was displayed to the media by Nicholas Negroponte from MIT and the Secretary-General of the UN last week. The colorful hand cranked little computer looked very attractive in the TV news, but is not a reality just yet. It may never be a reality and even if these computers are made and actually work, they may not necessarily be a good idea.

The $100 laptop is an MIT Media Lab project:
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.
As the Media Lab points out the laptop is not yet in production and will not be available for sale, but distributed to schools under government supervision.

The Secretary-General talked at the media event, but this isn't a UN project. If you look at what he actually said, he wasn't endorsing the details of this project, but the idea of economic and social development by improving learning.

I have a few reservations about the $100 Laptop:
  1. It isn't really a laptop.
  2. It is too expensive and there are better things to do with the money.
  3. There are better things to do with the technology
  4. The developing world has already designed and built better computers.
It isn't really isn't a laptop

A $100 Laptop is difficult to make and would be a major achievement, if it was true. But the $100 Laptop is really a PDA with a larger screen and a keyboard. That is not as difficult to make and such devices have been made for many years.

If you look carefully at photos of the unit being held in the hand, it is much smaller than a laptop computer. The processor and memory specifications of the unit are lower than those of a laptop and closer to those of a PDA. The computer would be better described as a subnotebook or palmtop computer. This is a size which would suit a child and many such devices have been made and sold for educational and other purposes.

It is too expensive and there are better things to do with the money

At $100 the computer will still be too expensive for many in developing countries and they could find better uses if offered the money. Even if basic needs for food and shelter are met and money can be spent on computers, there may be more realistic priorities than one per child. One computer per school or village, might be a more realistic and useful goal.

There are better things to do with the technology

Computer can be used to help with agriculture, business, civil administration, disaster management and defence, as well as education. A large scale humanitarian operation is underway in areas of Pakistan affected by earthquake. Providing children who have no shelter with laptop computers is not a priority. However, some small computers would be useful in coordinating relief operations. Recently I tested a new version of the Sahana Open Source Disaster Management System for a handheld computer.

The developing world has already designed and built better computers.

MIT's $100 Laptop does not actually exist, it is just an idea. In contrast the Simputer exists. This is an Indian designed PDA for developing countries. The Simputer uses an innovative open source hardware and software approach. A non-profit organization designed the computer and then licensed it to manufacturers. The computer runs Linux open source software, as the $100 Laptop proposes to do. Unlike the $100 Laptop, the Simputer is a commercial product and the customer can choose to buy it or spend the money on something else.

The Simputer is not perfect and doesn't seem to have been a great sales success. Perhaps the Simputer's largest problem has been in marketing it as a PDA. In comparison with conventional PDAs the Simputer looks large, cumbersome and dull. Also the Simputer lacks a keyboard. Another Indian made computer is the Mobilis. This is essentially a Simputer with a larger screen and a small rugged rubber keyboard. It is similar in concept to the $100 Laptop, but closer to reality.

Combine First World Marketing Hype with Developing Nations' IT Expertise

The best features of the proposed $100 Laptop could be combined with those of proven computers from developing nations, to produce a real computer for education.

The strength of the $100 Laptop is in its colorful case mimicking a laptop and the powerful marketing ability of the MIT Media Lab. The weakness is in the lack of practical and proven design. At the media event the charging handle of the supposed rugged $100 computer came off in the hands of the Secretary General.

The Simputer has a design tested in use and in the market. It suffers from honesty, in describing itself as a PDA and in having a simple case which looks dull. It also suffers from having to be made from components which are available now at the price they cost now.

Taking the best of both worlds a better computer for the developing world could be designed. This would have the marketing and backing of the $100 computer, with the practicality of real low cost computers designed in the developing world.

The result might be a computer with the internals of the Simputer and the colorful case of the MIT design (see my drawing). Unlike the MIT design, the unit would not have the charger built in and would have a rugged rubber keyboard. A separate hand cranked charger like the Freeplay unit could be used, or the new Freeplay foot powered "Weza" portable energy source shared by a school. The units would be available for sale, as well as humanitarian use (mine is shown running Sahana for a relief operation).

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Open source disaster management system on a PDA


Version 2 of the Sahana open source disaster management system was released for testing last week. See my quick check of the user interface. This includes screen shots on a mobile phone and PDA and in several languages including Chinese.

Version 1 of Sahana was developed in a hurry for the Asian tsunami and is to be pressed into service for the Pakistan earthquake. Earlier in the year I suggested changing the web interface so it would be more efficient in the field, could run on hand held devices and the interface could be machine translated into other languages. Not everything has been implemented yet, but enough to show it is possible.

ps: In the middle of the redesign of Sahana, Hurricane Katrina struck the USA, with reports of problems with coordination efforts. We discussed if the third world needed to lend its technical expertise to the USA. But the experience of trying to help fix web based systems during the Canberra bush-fires,
suggested there was little chance of the help being accepted.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Tsunami warning on my mobile phone

At 10:30 am today I got this SMS message on my mobile phone:

Warning ... - TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 002 PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 2312Z 14 NOV 2005 THIS
This is from my own do-it-yourself Tsunami warning system. UNESCO forward warnings for the Pacific and Indian Oceans by email. I have set my email system to forward a summary of the messages to my mobile phone by SMS.

This is one of the low cost Internet based emergency technologies I have suggested East Timor government use.

The system isn't perfect. The message took 18 minutes to get to me. It only took about two minutes to get through the email system and 30 seconds for the SMS to the phone. Where the other 15 and a half minutes delay was I am not sure.

Here is what the original warning looked like:

TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 002
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 2312Z 14 NOV 2005

THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE PACIFIC BASIN EXCEPT
ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.

... TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ...

THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS NOTE REVISED MAGNITUDE

ORIGIN TIME - 2139Z 14 NOV 2005
COORDINATES - 38.2 NORTH 144.8 EAST
LOCATION - OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU JAPAN
MAGNITUDE - 7.1

MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY

GAUGE LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL PER
------------------- ----- ------ ----- ------ -----
OFUNATO HONSHU 39.0N 141.8E 2228Z 0.16M 04MIN

TIME - TIME OF THE MEASUREMENT
AMPL - AMPLITUDE IN METERS FROM MIDDLE TO CREST OR MIDDLE TO TROUGH OR HALF OF THE CREST TO TROUGH PER - PERIOD OF TIME FROM ONE WAVE CREST TO THE NEXT

EVALUATION

SEA LEVEL READINGS INDICATE A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. IT MAY HAVE BEEN DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. FOR THOSE AREAS - WHEN NO MAJOR WAVES ARE OBSERVED FOR TWO HOURS AFTER THE ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OR DAMAGING WAVES HAVE NOT OCCURRED FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS THEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ASSUME THE THREAT IS PASSED. DANGER TO BOATS AND COASTAL STRUCTURES CAN CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS DUE TO RAPID CURRENTS. AS LOCAL CONDITIONS CAN CAUSE A WIDE VARIATION IN TSUNAMI WAVE ACTION THE ALL CLEAR DETERMINATION MUST BE MADE BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.

NO TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS FOR OTHER COASTAL AREAS IN THE PACIFIC ALTHOUGH SOME OTHER AREAS MAY EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES.

THIS WILL BE THE FINAL BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.

THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER WILL ISSUE BULLETINS FOR ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.



Sunday, November 13, 2005

John Birmingham says ebooks sell


I wrote November 13, 2005:
... John Birmingham, author of "He Died with a Falafel in His Hand" , and more recently "Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1" and "Designated Targets: World War 2.2" is speaking at the National Library of Australia, in Canberra at 2pm Sunday. ...
Greetings, live via wireless Internet, from the reading room of the National Library of Australia. John Birmingham gave an entertaining and very generous talk to the friends of the library. He talked about his background, including working on security vetting at the Defence Department as well as work as a journalist. He mentioned how a few people had objected to being mentioned in the Falafel book but many more people had claimed to be in it.

At question time I asked about the electronic editions of his books. John said that they sold well in the USA, but not in Australia. Colin Steele asked a follow up question about e-books. Colin is the former Librarian at the Australian National University and ANU Emeritus Fellow, who I regularly bump into at e-publishing seminars.

What I didn't know was Colin is also a character in John Birmingham's latest book. John explained that he acknowledges people by naming characters in the books after them and gets revenge on bad reviewers in the same way. As I have written a good review, look out for Tom Worthington in charge of the USS Stradbroke Island in the next book. ;-)

ps: The NLA is giving away free wireless Internet access in the reading room (at about 256 kbps). I signed up ten minutes before John's talk. This requires first signing up as a reader and then being issued with a password. It was a lot quicker and easier than when I signed up as a reader with the British Library in London a few years ago. The catering at NLA is much better than at BL as well. ;-)

Author of Choice: John Birmingham

John Birmingham, author of "He Died with a Falafel in His Hand" , and more recently "Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1" and "Designated Targets: World War 2.2" is speaking at the National Library of Australia, in Canberra at 2pm Sunday.

I will be going along, having enjoyed Mr. Birmingham books and felt part of them.

In "He Died with a Falafel in His Hand" and the less successful sequel "The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco" John Birmingham describes life in group houses in Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane. Reading "Falafel" was a painful experience because I laughed so much my sides hurt. It was disconcerting because some of the stories sounded very familar.

"Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1" and the sequel "Designated Targets: World War 2.2" are science fiction about a 21st century US and Australian Navy task force going back in time and fighting world war two again. Birmingham provides an action adventure in the style of Tom Clancy, with lots of gadgets guns and heroes, but slightly less of a US centric world view. There is some humor, for example one of the warships is a supercarrier named after President Clinton; but it is Hillary, not Bill.

Some years ago I lived in a group house in Canberra, which had been previously occupied by a coven of witches and real estate scammers. So some of the very funny parts of Birmingham's Falafel book sounded familiar. We had visits from the police and a geriatric private detective looking for the previous tenants (some associates of a former Deputy Prime Minister). The neighbors talked of the previous occupant sending flaming arrows over the fence during backyard rituals. I wrote about it in on-line spoof called "Canberra Group House and Garden". The neighbors were interviewed about this by Time Magazine for a special edition on cyberspace.

One of the weapons John Birmingham speculates about in
"Weapons of Choice" is an Australia high speed catamaran HMAS Moreton Bay. This appears to be inspired by the real Australian made high speed catamaran HMAS Jervis Bay, which transported troops to East Timor.

During the Olympic Games I ended up being briefly left in charge of one of these high speed catamarans
, alone on the bridge. The ship was being used as a floating convention center for the games and being marketed to visiting US military. It was not at sea at the time, but tied up alongside at Darling Harbor in Sydney. Even so there were hundreds of dials and switches in front of me. Something started beeping and flashing and as I was about to panic the ship was on fire, someone came in said "its just the the sewage tank needs emptying" and left again.

While working for defence I had a slightly surreal day on a US flagship
in a borrowed uniform during a joint exercise. The greatest danger I faced was seasickness after a meal in the officer's mess. There was a great assortment of people from different armed services, plus civilian scientists and even telephone salesmen on board. This makes Birmingham's description of a multinational task force seem more real. One aspect which is not portrayed well in literature is how ordinary and low tech lot of the equipment is and how mundane and boring a lot of the day is.

Some years later I stumbled across one of the high speed catamarans, just competed for the US Army in Hobart. It was about to make a high speed dash to the gulf war. I wrote a web report on this and people aboard the ship send me photos and reports of their travels.
It looks like John Birmingham is wrong in one aspect of his future history. The Australian Navy is not buying these new Australian designed ships, the US military is. Australia continues to buy older technology imported ship designs.

Some of John Birmingham's books are available,
including "Designated Targets", in electronic format. These are around the same price as the paperback editions and I wonder if may are sold.

As they have the full text of "Weapons of Choice", Amazon provide some interesting statistics. The Concordance has the one hundred most common words in the book in alphabetical order, which reads like Haiku poetry:

admiral again american another asked away big birmingham black brasch came captain chief choice clinton come commander day deck down enough even eyes face felt few fire first force get going good got guys halabi hand head hidaka himself hours hundred japanese john jones knew know kolhammer last let lieutenant light little long look looked man men might minutes moertopo moment need new nothing now officer old own right room screen second see seemed ship sir small something sort spruance still take tell thing think though thought thousand three time took turned two voice war weapons without women world yamamoto

The Readability indexes indicate it is an easy read (9.8 on the Fog index) and it is a bargain at 16,122 Words per Dollar.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Smarter Small Car?


After the Sydney International Motor Show I thought I would make my own contribution to car design: cut about 1 m out of a small car, such as a Diahatsu Cuore. This would make a two seater car, about the same length as the Mercedes Benz ForTwo Smart Car.

I saw one of the tiny Mercedes at a tiny petrol station in Brussels and another made up as a micro NSW Police car outside the central railway station in Sydney. These are at home in the inner city.
Two of these small cars would fit into the one parking space of my "Smart Apartment" for a Euro lifestyle.

But the Smart Car is equipped with exotic technology and construction techniques which raise the price. The same result could be achieved by shortening a more conventional small car: just cut out the back seat.
The Mercedes is called a "ForTwo" so mine is the "2Cheap". ;-)

As an example of real car hacking, Shaun Williams
replaced the petrol engine in a Toyota Echo (Yaris) car and with an Electric one.

Friday, November 04, 2005

IT in Government Conference

Tom Worthington having iris scanned

Greetings from the IT in Government conference in Canberra. One of the gadgets on display is an iris recognition system for security applications. I put my face about 30 cm from what looks like a digital camera and the system scanned the iris of my eye using a infrared.

But as well as the toys, the conference has serious sessions with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of government agencies and industry speakers. One item in my "live" report from last year's conference, which has been in the news recently is Customs Cargo Management:

... Customs are rebuilding systems conceived in the 1960s to integrate industry and customs. At this point a theme in the day became apparent: defence, immigration and customs all have real time, sensitive systems which have to link internationally and interface securely with other organizations. The new customs system received press criticism but worked well in practice. The key issue was not the software development, but helping clients with implementing digital certificates to use the system. The system receives 85,000 incoming messages and sends 200,000 outbound per day. It uses SMTP e-mail protocol for simplicity. The system is more than 23,000 Function points in size. ...
See: "Ebusiness, Egovernment, Exports: Implementing The Customs Cargo Management Reengineering System" at: http://www.acs.org.au/act/conference/Murray.ppt
Presentations from this year's conference will be online tomorrow at the conference web site.

Edward Mandla, ACS President opened this year's conference with entertaining stories about a recent Australian IT delegation to India. He argued that "left brain" routine administrative processes will increasingly be moved (out-sourced and off-shored) to India and China. This will include most legal and accounting jobs. He argued Australia can compete with "right brained" creative jobs, including IT ones.

Jonathan Palmer, CIO of the Australian Bureau of Statistics talked about recent work on inter-operability in government. A draft "Information Interoperability Framework" has been prepared and should be public early next year. Work is underway on security and archiving of email. He showed us the National Data Network. I previously attended a demonstration of the NDN at the ABS.

Graham Fry, CIO of Attorney Generals talked about the diverse work of the department. Apart from high profile national security issues, AGs also looks after copyright. Still to come are the CIOs of Immigration, CSIRO and the Commonwealth Government. Presentation notes may be made available later by the ACS, but you really needed to be here. ;-)